CHAPTER 8

                 ¹A ram’s horn to your lips!

                     —he is like an eagle against the LORD’s house.

                 For they have breached My covenant

                     and rebelled against My teaching.

                 ²To Me they cry out—

                     “We know you, O God of Israel!”

                 ³Israel rejects what is good—

                     an enemy shall pursue him.

                 ⁴They set up kings but not through Me,

                     installed nobles but without My knowledge.

                 From their silver and their gold

                     they made themselves idols,

                         that they might be cut off.

                 ⁵Your calf rejects you, Samaria,

                     My wrath against them flares.

                         How long will they fail to be clean?

                 ⁶And it—a craftsman made it,

                     and it is not a god.

                 For shards it shall become,

                     the calf of Samaria.

                 ⁷For they sow the wind

                     and harvest a storm.

                 Standing grain that has no sprouts,

                     it will not make flour.

                 If perhaps it should make some,

                     strangers shall swallow it up.

                 ⁸Israel has been swallowed,

                     now they become among the nations

                         like a vessel no one wants.

                 ⁹For they have gone up to Assyria,

                     a wild ass on its own is Ephraim,

                         they have made courtship’s plea.

                 ¹⁰Though they give gifts among the nations,

                     now will I gather them up,

                 and they will soon tremble

                     from the burden of kings and nobles.

                 ¹¹For Ephraim made many altars

                     an offense they were for him,

                         altars to offend.

                 ¹²I wrote for him My many teachings—

                     like something strange they were viewed.

                 ¹³The sacrifices I gave they slaughtered,

                     it was flesh, and they ate.

                         The LORD did not accept them favorably.

                 Now will their crime be recalled,

                     and a reckoning made for their offense.

                         They shall go back to Egypt.

                 ¹⁴And Israel forgot his Maker

                     and he built palaces.

                 And Judah made many fortified towns,

                     but I set fire to his towns,

                         and it consumed his citadels.